RIOTORO Prism CR1280 Full-Tower Chassis Review

RIOTORO is a brand new company, looking to penetrate a pretty saturated market of PC components. Comprised of few former Corsair and Nvidia employees, RIOTORO will likely succeed in the genre that they’re in currently and likely if they decide to expand their horizon.

The Prism CR1280 is the world’s first RGB-lit chassis and brings you a new level of factory-built coolness. Sure you can add your own RGB LEDs to your existing chassis, but RIOTORO did that for you with this product.

I’m kind of indifferent with this case, but slightly leaning towards the “I like it” side. I really like several of the features, such as the RGB lighting, massive frameless side window, dual chamber design (though flawed), simple hardware install, and decent wire management, but at the same time I disliked a few things, too.

For one, I was not happy to see any active cooling over the HDD cage, and no option to fix that; the bottom chamber seemed a little awkward overall compared to other dual-chamber cases that I’ve worked with in the past; it seemed to lack space. The front panel was also a tad tricky to get to pop back in place, but perhaps with time things will “loosen up” and it’ll be easier to put back on. No included PSU cable extenders is a big negative here, as this is a dual-chamber full-tower design and the PSU is just a hair farther away from the motherboard than a mid-tower or traditional full-tower design is. At this price point I would have liked to see something included instead of scavenging for one.

The biggest issue that I discovered was the cutout on the motherboard tray is incorrectly sized or placed for my motherboard. I could not install my water cooler’s backplate without having to disassemble my build somewhat. I have to say, this made me frown. Also with the cooler, the button that holds the top shroud in place actually got in the way of my radiator, causing me to put a little force against the button in order to install the screws into the radiator.

Unfortunately if you choose to install your own LED strips inside, you won’t be able to sync up the color changing with the built-in hardware automatically. This isn’t really a negative, but something that is worthy of pointing out – the controller cannot handle the end user’s LEDs. I could not find a way to stop the color rotation of the LED system, which is not going to appeal to those who want a static color.

Available today for $139.99 MSRP on Amazon, you can get your very own Prism CR1280, which also has a 2-year warranty.

Overall I have to say this is a pretty good start for RIOTORO, and I feel that with time they’ll perfect their products. This is only one of their first cases and I think they did a fine job, but it does still need some improvements.

Legit Bottom Line: The Prism CR1280 is the world’s first RGB-lit chassis brought to you by a brand new company. RIOTORO seems to know what they’re doing and with time will bring out even cooler products.